Salary hikes may remain static at 8-10% in 2019

Source: mydigitalfc.com | Dec 25, 2018

With technology replacing a lot many traditional jobs, the year passing-by appears to be a transition year for the employment space with hiring for several entry-level profiles taking a big hit in 2018 and average salary hikes remaining static in a range of 8-10 per cent.

Going forward, experts and hiring managers are hopeful about more than 1 million new jobs in the new year, though salary hikes may still remain the same. However, people in some specific evolving skills may get much more.

Employers are expected to keep a cautious approach at least in the first half of 2019 due to evolving political uncertainties relating to national elections, despite employment generation being a key poll plank for almost all political parties.

Job creation has been a subject of big debate in the recent past, as despite a fast face of overall economic growth, the level of employment generation has not kept pace with an estimated 12 million people entering the labour market each year in the recent years.

Experts rue that the situation has been further confounded by lack of sufficient, credible and periodic data on job creation.

Following the twin disruptions of demonetisation and the implementation of GST in the previous year, 2018 has still turned out to be a year of recovery for the Indian job landscape.

“It is ironic that while job creation will be a crucial plank on which the national elections will be fought, organisations may actually be taking a cautious approach to rolling out their business plans for 2019, thereby negatively impacting job creation at least for the first half of the year,” said Nis­h­ith Upadhyaya, head of advisory services at SHRM (India). The Society for Hu­man Resource Managem­ent is the world’s largest HR professional soc­iety, representing 3 lakh me­m­bers in over 165 countries.

The industries that are directly correlated to gover­n­ment schemes for infrastr­ucture, roads, highways and airports may proceed cauti­o­usly till at least May 2019, by when the new governme­nt is expected to be in place. Other sectors, whose products and services are depe­ndent on local consu­m­ption and exports, are expected to go ahead with expansion and recruitment plans.

According to HR service provider Randstad India chief Paul Dupuis, IT industry turned the corner this year in terms of hiring after two years of tepid job creation, helped by improved availability of skilled talent in new-age technology areas and big ticket investments in the e-commerce sector.

Other sectors that show­ed improvement include infrastructure, ma­n­ufactu­ring, retail & FMCG, while the job scene for banking, financial services and telecom appeared difficult.

Going ahead, banking, financial services, retail, logistics, IT/ITES, e-comme­r­ce, startups, consumer go­ods, infrastructure and hea­l­thcare will see the maximum growth in 2019, said R Chakraborty, pre­s­ident of Indian Staffing Federation.

Chakraborty said retail would capitalise on incre­ased consumer spending in non-metro and smaller cities, which in turn would drive employment growth.

According to Sameer Na­g­pal, director of employab­ility solutions at Aon Co­Cubes, salary hikes in India are stabilising around the 9-10 per cent, which is the highest in the Asia Pacific region. As per Aon’s latest survey, despite improvement in macro-economic forecasts, the salary increments for 2018 stood at 9.5 per cent, while, the projections for 2019 are at around 9.6 per cent.

“For people who are already employed, average salary hike can range anything between 10-12 per cent, wherein top performers may get 15-20 per cent and average performers can expect 5-8 per cent. But, for many specific skills, people may end up getting hike of 30-50 per cent,” said Sunil Goel, MD of leading executive search organisation GlobalHunt.

As per experts, one of the most significant HR trends of 2018 has been the way automation and artificial intelligence is transforming the world of work, while also posing a significant threat to job roles that are structured and repetitive.

“In 2018, technologies of the future were the name of the game with Indian jobseekers increasingly looking for high-skill jobs that will prepare them for the changing nature of work,” Sashi Kumar, managing director at Indeed India said.